Kimmerioi) and their lands are characterized in the light of mythological representations of the Hellenes and are localized in the Far West near the world river Ocean, where the rays of the sun-Helios never penetrate. The Cimmerians are mentioned in the poem only once in the eleventh song (“Victims for Calling the Dead” / “Summoning Shadows”).Translation options with this passage (lines 13—19):
“Soon we came to the deep waters of the Ocean;
Tam kimmerian sad area, covered forever
Wet fog and mist of clouds; never shows
The eye of the people there faces radiant Gelios, the land of
He leaves, ascending the stars, abundant sky,
He descends from heaven, abundantly with stars, turning to the earth;
A joyless night there from time immemorial surrounds the living.”
translation of Zhukovsky, Odyssey
Here Homer draws us a place where it is obvious that the Cimmerians lived earlier, before coming to the Black Sea, and this information is all the more valuable to us, because they paint us a picture of the Far North. But the Cimmerians in the seventh century BC, or rather a part of them, crossed the Caucasus Range and fell into the thick of historical events. penetrated into the Caucasus from the steppe zone and were in 714 BC. e. recorded by Assyrian texts under the name of the people “gimirru”. The data obtained from the analysis of the archives of Sargon II, Assarhaddon and Ashurbanipal are as follows. In 714 BC e. Cimmerians are fixed in the area north or northwest of Lake Sevan, and that in the previous period they paid tribute to Urartu. King Urartu Rus I made the next campaign against the nomads and suffered a major defeat, as a result of which many noble people were captured. At the same time, the Cimmerians attacked the Washi region adjacent to Manna, in the region of Lake Urmia. After these events, the Cimmerians are not mentioned in the Assyrian texts for 35 years. In the 660s BC e. they increase the onslaught of Lydia, as a result of which King Gig turned to Assyria for help. Soon the Lydians managed to defeat the Cimmerians, who for some time secured the kingdom. At this time, the nomads managed to tear away a number of Western territories from Assyria, which made Ashurbanipal consider them to be very dangerous opponents. Strengthening, the Cimmerians, led by King Dugdammi (Tugdamme; Ligdamis of the Greek texts) in 644 BC. e. again attack Lydia, as a result of which the Sardis were taken and King Gig was killed. At this time, there was the only clash between the Greeks and the Cimmerians, who managed to capture some of the cities of Ionia, in particular Magnesia-on-Meander and, apparently, Ephesus (according to Archilochus, the Cimmerians ravaged the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus). The stronghold of the conquerors in the west of Anatolia was Antander, which later even received the name Kimmerida. But for the permanent resettlement of his fellow tribesmen, Tugdamme chose the more distant Cappadocia. Soon, new attacks were launched on Assyria, but during one of these campaigns, King Dugdammi died of an illness (Strabo assumed that Tugdamme was defeated and killed by the Scythian king Madiy; Ashurbanipal claims that God Marduk defeated Tugdamme), and the Cimmerians retreated. His heir Sandakurr (Sandakshatra), also called the king of the Scythian Saks, is referred to as the enemy of Assyria in one of the texts of Ashurbanipal, but the nomads were no longer able to regain their power. They are no longer mentioned in Assyrian documents.
In the Bible, the Cimmerians are known as the Yaphetic people of Homer. In the Ossetian Nart epic, the Cimmerians are referred to as the gumirs that preceded the Narts. And such a people is mentioned later in the name CIMBRA, in connection with the attack of this people on Italy. The language of this tribe did not survive, so no one was going to study it, among the Romans there were never scientists standing next to Herodotus or Strabo because of curiosity, openness to other cultures and lack of neglect of others.
Scythians
Scythians (Greek: Σκύθης, Σκύθοι, self-name: Skolotoi – an ancient Iranian-speaking people that existed in the VIII century BC – IV century CE. Scythians did not have written language, only a few words are known from their language By the way, the small Skolt people still live in the North of Norway, that is, it is very likely that some of the Scythian ancestors migrated from the Far North to the south, as in the case of the Cimmerians and the Huns. Some of the Scythians lived in the steppe zone of the Northern Black Sea Coast from the Danube to the Don named in ancient Greek sources Scythia, and in the regions of Tuva and Altai, Even in the time of Peter the Great, numerous artifacts of Scythian culture were found. Many tribes and peoples were both in alliance with the Scythians and hostile to them. The Scythians reached the very borders of Mongolia, and the Scythians of Siberia and the Far East are bashfully referred to as “Pseudo-Scythians.” from the works of ancient authors (such as Herodotus, Hippocrates, Pliny the Elder Zhang Qian), archaeological excavations and genetic research Sarmatians were related to the Scythians, because the Sarmatians are the same royal Scythians, only worshiping the Mother Goddess, Tsaritsa – Heaven, so called Sarmatians.
The origin of the ethnonym
Many scientists, including F. Justi, M. Fasmer, O. Semereni and V. I. Abaev, raise the word * skuta to the Indo-European root with the meaning shoot. In particular, V.I. Abaev compares the word skuta with the Germanic * skut- (archery, shoot) In turn, K.T. Vitchak and S.V. Kullanda explain the Scythian self-name as follows: Greek. Σκόλοτοι <* skula-ta <* skuδa-ta <* skuda-ta. But this is rather an attempt to pull what is desired. But it is not a fact, but a fact, is a small tribe in Norway, living now, not far from the Kola Peninsula, and called SKOLTS. That is, cleaved skolts are those that came from the Kola Peninsula, from Kola, one of the names of the Sun. Hence the name of one of the kings of the ancestors of the Scythians, but rather, deities, Kolaksai, literally, “Sun-Tsar”. The transition of the ancient Iranian * δ to the Scythian * l as a characteristic feature of the Scythian language is also confirmed by other Scythian words, for example, Scythian. Παραλάται – tribal name meaning, according to Herodotus (IV, 6), the ruling Scythian dynasty and explained to him in other places with the help of the expression Σκύθαι βασιλητοι, that is, “royal Scythians”; <Iran. * paradāta – “appointed at the head, appointed by law”, avest. paraδāta- (the honorary title of the lord, letters. “placed in front, at the head”). In the vocabulary of Hesihei of Alexandria, the Scythian word μελιτ. ιον is mentioned – “some kind of drink from honey”, where the transition * δ to * l in the common Iranian root * madu-, * maδu- “honey”, “sweet made from honey, is also visible” drink, hops drink. “And here, many scientists are mistaken, here Herodotus translated the Scythian meaning of the word into the Greek language verbatim, that is, as ‘having power over people.’ Indeed, in the Hellenic language LAOI is a man (just a man”, that is, here literally’ noble, having power ‘but not royal, not lords.
O. N. Trubachev linked the self-name of the Scythians with the root with the meaning “cut off, split off’ (cf. Ossetian ironic sk’˚yd, Digorian (æ) sk’ud “torn off’). And this concept is close to Russian, in the meaning of “splinter”, but again the path leads us to the Kola Peninsula.
Anthropological type
Anthropologically, there are two groups of European Scythians – forest-steppe and steppe. Forest-steppe Scythians differed from the Black Sea by a narrower and longer skull, a narrow, less high and sharply profiled face. These features bring them closer to the narrow-faced local population of the Late Bronze Age. The steppe are more tall, with a wider and shorter skull. It is obvious that the narrow-faced type is the Andronovites, newcomers from the Ob river basin, the Huns-Hans, and the higher-faced ones
